From the real George Alexander Louis to the fake “Captain Sum Ting Wong” and “Wi Tu Lo,” names have been all the rage for the past two weeks.

Soon after San Francisco-based KTVU mistakenly aired four fake names for Asiana Flight 214 pilots, a clip of the segment went viral on YouTube.

News of the royal baby’s name also spread quickly.

Now people are engaged in a national discussion over the importance of names, something Albert Mehrabian, a UCLA social psychology professor emeritus knows a lot about because he has written two books on the subject.

“The way a person is dressed, groomed, their mannerisms, their physical appearance — all those things make an impression. So does a name,” Mehrabian said. “The difference with a name is that it can make an impression when you’re not present. You send out a r?sum? and somebody who looks at the very top of the r?sum? sees your name.”

This invisible tattoo that parents put on their babies can affect them for the rest of their lives, studies have shown.

Mehrabian conducted two studies, from 1990 to 2002, which looked at the “overall attractiveness of the impression” of a large list of names. Thousands of surveyed people put a grade on how ethical, caring, popular, fun and successful imagined individuals with certain names were. The volunteers had nothing to work with aside from a name and the gender of the person.

Based on his data, he said Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, shouldn’t have named their son George because it scored 36 out of 100 in terms of overall attractiveness. Alexander, on the other hand, is a “fabulous” name, he said.

“If those were the names they wanted to use for family reasons — for tradition — I would’ve called him ‘Alexander George’ because Alexander gets a 92,” Mehrabian said. “Most significantly, Alexander gets 100 on success.”

James, Steven, Christopher, Elizabeth, Jacqueline, and Holly are all names that garner extremely positive reactions from people, Mehrabian said. That is unless they are misspelled, which lowers their attractiveness, he added.

In another study in 2009, Swedish researchers found that a sample of African, Asian and Slavic immigrants who changed their names to be ethnically neutral or more Swedish-sounding found a 141 percent increase in earnings.

“We believe (the name change effect) stems largely from improving one’s chances of being called to a job interview and thus increasing employment probabilities,” authors Mahmood Arai and Peter Skogman Thoursie wrote in their study. “Employers might sort out the applicants with foreign-sounding names due to (notions) about abilities and characteristics assumed to be associated with such names.”

Many people with foreign names have faced the dilemma of whether they should stand up proud or try to conform.

After 26 years, Annie Moc, from Alhambra, legally changed her name from Qiong Xi Moc because she needed an English name for work in America, she said.

“My boss gave me the name. He said I like calling you Annie,” said Moc, a caretaker for the elderly. “It’s easier for people to say. I tried to teach my American friends to say my Chinese name but some people said, ‘I like your ‘Annie’ name.’ “

Yet Moc, 49, said she is very proud of her Chinese name, which her father gave her. Qiong means peaceful, calm and beautiful things, she said.

“In America, you could change your name easily, but you can’t change your Chinese name,” she said. “It has special meaning, especially the middle name. Every family name has an assigned middle name,” meaning every surname has a designated male and female middle name for each generation.

Other Asians have also encountered problems because Americans often viewed their names as exotic, said Liang Ming Yu, from Rosemead. His given name translates to “bright light” and “understandable,” he said, because his parents wanted him to be smart and to grow up honestly. But to avoid school bullying, he gave himself the nickname Rex.

“When you’re in school, you tell some people your name and they think it’s weird,” said Yu, 26. “I needed my nickname for school because every Chinese person (there) had a nickname. We needed it in case people wanted to make fun of our real names,” something he said happened quite often.

It is human nature for people to be “reticent” when they see a different-sounding name, especially if they live in more provincial areas, Mehrabian said. But he emphasized that there is absolutely nothing wrong with less mainstream names.

But there is something wrong when parents take too many liberties, he said.

“One of the main things that is happening is where people are trying to become overly creative and try to make names,” he said. “They think they’re making their child stand out by giving them that name. Would you dye your child’s hair blue and send him to school to make him stand out?”

Within their lifetime, people with bizarre or strangely spelled names will have to go through hundreds to thousands of interactions where they have to explain their names’ origin, Mehrabian said. He questioned whether this life sentence is fair.

However Evette Torrence, from Monrovia, disagreed with Mehrabian’s assessment. She named her 5-year-old son Charlevoix and 2-year-old daughter Margeaux to honor the French heritage of her birthplace in Michigan.

“As soon as you say your name, people start having preconceptions,” said Torrence, 33. “I wanted (my children) to stand out. If a teacher has a hard time pronouncing their names at first, that’s fine. (My kids) will be able to define themselves and discover themselves without already being put in a certain box.”

Torrence also doesn’t mind if other kids mocked her children because of their unique names, she said.

“I invite that because it gives kids a chance to understand differences,” she said. “Usually celebrities get people’s attention because they name their kids ‘Blue.’ If it’s George — how many Georges are there? People are already putting (the royal baby) into a box.”

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